Born in 1949 in Peine, West Germany, Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe attended
the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken and the Goethe-Universität in
Frankfurt am Main. He is Professor Emeritus of Economics at University of
Nevada, Las Vegas, Distinguished Fellow with the Ludwig von Mises Institute,
Founder and President of The Property and Freedom Society, and former Editor
of the Journal of Libertarian Studies. Professor Hoppe is a leading
Austrian school economist and anarcho-capitalist philosopher, his most famous
work being Democracy: The God That Failed. This paper was first
presented at the 5th annual meeting of the Property and Freedom Societyhttp://www.propertyandfreedom.org),
held in Bodrum, Turkey, 3rd to 7th June 2010.

The views expressed in this publication are those of its author,
and
not necessarily those of the Libertarian Alliance, its Committee,
Advisory Council or subscribers.

When I first
envisioned the idea of this Society, more than 10 years ago and then still a
society without a name, I had direct experience with only two other Societies
from which to learn.

My first
experience was with the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS), which Friedrich Hayek had
founded in 1947.

During the
1990s, I was three times invited as a speaker to MPS meetings in Cannes, Cape
Town, and Barcelona. Each time, with papers attacking democracy and
egalitarianism, defending monarchies vs. democracies, eviscerating the
classical-liberal idea of a minimal-state as self-contradictory, and
propagating a stateless, anarcho-capitalist natural order, my appearance was
considered somewhat scandalous: too irreverent, too confrontational, and too
sensational.

Whatever the
function of the MPS may have been in the immediate aftermath of WW II, at the
time of my encounter with it, I did not find it particularly to my liking.

To be sure, I
met many bright and interesting people, but essentially, MPS meetings were
junkets for “free-market” and “limited-government” think-tank and foundation
staffers, their various professorial affiliates and protégées, and the
principal donor-financiers of it all, mostly from the U.S., and more
specifically from Washington DC. Characteristically, Ed Feulner, long-time
President of the Heritage Foundation, the major GOP think-tank and
intellectual shill to the welfare-warfare state politics of every Republican
government administration, from Reagan to Bush junior, is a former MPS
president and, more significantly, has been its long-time treasurer.

There had
been skepticism concerning the MPS from the beginning. Ludwig von Mises,
Hayek’s teacher and friend, had expressed severe doubt concerning his plan
simply in view of Hayek’s initial invitees: how could a society filled with
certified state-interventionists promote the goal of a free and prosperous
commonwealth? Despite his initial reservations, however, Mises became a
founding member of the MPS. Yet his prediction turned out correct. Famously,
at an early MPS meeting, Mises would walk out denouncing speakers and
panelists as a bunch of socialists.

Essentially,
this was also my first impression when I came in contact with the MPS and this
impression has been confirmed since. The MPS is a society in which every
right-wing social democrat can feel at home. True, occasionally a few strange
birds are invited to speak, but the meetings are dominated and the range of
acceptable discourse is delineated by certified state-interventionists: by the
heads of government funded or connected foundations and think-tanks, by
central bank payrollees, paper-money enthusiasts, and assorted international
educrats and researchocrats in-and-out of government. No discussion in the
hallowed halls of the MPS of US imperialism or the Bush war crimes, for
instance, or of the financial crimes committed by the FED, and no discussion
of any sensitive ‘race-issue,’ of course.

Not all of
this can be blamed on Hayek, of course. He had increasingly lost control of
the MPS already long before his death in 1992. But then: Hayek did have much
to do with what the MPS had become. For, as Mises could have known already
then and as would become apparent at last in 1960, with the publication of
Hayek’s Constitution of Liberty, Hayek himself was a proven
interventionist. In the third part of this famous book, Hayek had laid out a
plan for a “free” society so riddled with interventionist designs that every
moderate social-democrat—of the Scandinavian-German variety—could easily
subscribe. When, at the occasion of Hayek’s 80th birthday in 1979,
then social-democratic chancellor of West Germany, Helmut Schmidt, sent Hayek
a congratulatory note proclaiming “we are all Hayekians now,” this was not an
empty phrase. It was true, and Schmidt meant it.

What I came
to realize, then, was this: The deplorable development—as judged from a
classic-liberal vantage point—of the MPS was not an accident. Rather, it was
the necessary consequence of a fundamental theoretical flaw committed not only
by Hayek but, ultimately, also by Mises, with his idea of a minimal state.
This flaw did not merely afflict the MPS. It afflicted the entire
“limited-government” think-tank industry that had sprung up as its offspring
since the 1960s throughout the Western, US. dominated world, and for which
the MPS had assumed the function of an “International.”

The goal of
“limited”—or “constitutional”—government, that Friedrich Hayek, Milton
Friedman, James Buchanan and other MPS grandees had tried to promote and that
every “free-market” think-tank today proclaims as its goal, is an “impossible”
goal, much like it is an impossible goal to try squaring the circle. You
cannot first establish a territorial monopoly of law and order and then expect
that this monopolist will not make use of this awesome privilege of
legislating in its own favor. Likewise: You cannot establish a territorial
monopoly of paper-money production and expect the monopolist not to use its
power of printing up ever more money. Limiting the power of the state, once
it has been granted a territorial monopoly of legislation, is impossible, a
self-contradictory goal. To believe that it is possible to limit government
power—other than by subjecting it to competition, i.e., by not allowing
monopoly privileges of any kind to arise in the first place—is to assume that
the nature of Man changes as the result of the establishment of government
(very much like the miraculous transformation of Man that socialists believe
to happen with the onset of socialism). That is, the whole thing: limited
government, is an illusionary goal. To believe it to be possible is to
believe in miracles.

The strategy
of Hayek and the MPS, then, had to fail. Instead of helping to
reform—liberalize—the (Western) State, as they intended (or pretended?) to do,
the MPS and the international “limited-government” think-tank industry would
become an integral part of a continuously expanding welfare-warfare
state system.

Indicators
for this verdict abound: The typical location of the think tanks is in or near
the capital city, most prominently Washington, DC, because their principal
addressee is the central government. They react to measures and announcements
of government, and they suggest and make proposals to government. Most
contacts of think-tankers outside their own institution are with politicians,
government bureaucrats, lobbyists, and assorted staffers and assistants.
Along with connected journalists, these are also the regular attendees of
their conferences, briefings, receptions and cocktail parties. There is a
steady exchange of personnel between think tanks and governments. And the
leaders of the limited government industry are frequently themselves prominent
members of the power elite and the ruling class. Most indicative of all: For
decades, the limited government movement has been a growth industry. Its
annual expenditures currently run in the hundreds of millions of dollars, and
billions of dollars likely have been spent in total. All the while, State
expenditures never and nowhere fell, not even once, but instead always and
uninterruptedly increased to ever more dizzying heights. And yet, this
glaring failure of the industry to deliver the promised good of limited
government is not punished but, perversely, rewarded with still more ample
funds. The more the think tanks fail, the more money they get. The State and
the free market think tank industry thus live in perfect harmony with each
other. They grow together, in tandem.

For limited
government advocates such as Hayek and the entire free market think tank
industry this is an embarrassment. They must try to explain it away somehow,
as accidental or coincidental. And they typically do so. Simple enough, by
arguing that without their continued funding and operations matters would be
even worse. Thus excused, then, the industry continues on as before,
undisturbed by any fact or event past or future. But the embarrassing facts
are not accidental or coincidental and could have been
systematically predicted—if only one had better understood the nature of the
state and did not believe in miracles.

As a
territorial monopolist of legislation and the money-printing press, the State
has a natural tendency to grow: to use its “fiat” laws and “fiat” money to
gain increasing control of society and social institutions. With “fiat laws”
the State has the unique power of threatening and punishing or incentivizing
and rewarding whatever it pleases, and with its “fiat money” it can buy-up
support, bribe, and corrupt more easily than anyone else. Certainly, an
extraordinary institution such as this will have the means at its disposal,
legal and financial, to deal with the challenge posed by a limited government
industry! Historically, the State has successfully dealt with far more
formidable opponents, such as organized religion, for instance! Unlike the
Church or churches, however, the limited government industry is conveniently
located and concentrated at or near the center of State power, and the
industry’s entire raison d’être is to talk and have access to the State. That
is what its donor-financiers typically expect. Yet so much the easier then
was it for the State to target and effectively control this industry. The
State only had to set up its own bureaucracy in charge of
free-market-relations and lure the limited-government NGOs with conferences,
invitations, sponsorships, grants, money and employment prospects. Without
having to resort to threats, these measures alone were sufficient to ensure
compliance on the part of the free-market think-tank industry and its
associated intellectuals. The market demand for intellectual services is low
and fickle and hence intellectuals can be bought up cheaply! Moreover, through
its cooperation with the free market industry the State could enhance its own
legitimacy and intellectual respectability as an “economically enlightened”
institution and thus open up still further room for State growth.
Essentially, as with all so-called NGOs, the State managed to transform the
limited government industry into just another vehicle for its own
aggrandizement.

What I
learned from my experience with the MPS, then, was that an entirely different
strategy had to be chosen if one wanted to limit the power of the state. For
socialists or social-democrats it is perfectly rational to talk and seek
access to the State and to try marching through its institutions, because the
Left wants to increase the power of the State. That is, the Left wants what
the State is disposed to do anyway, by virtue of its nature as a territorial
monopolist of law and order. But the same strategy is inefficient or even
counterproductive if one wants to roll the power of the State back,
regardless of whether one wants to roll it back completely and establish a
state-less natural order or roll it back only “sharply” or “drastically” to
some “glorious” or “golden” status quo ante. In any case, this goal can only
be reached if instead of talking and seeking access to the State, the State is
openly ignored, avoided and disavowed and its agents and propagandists are
explicitly excluded from one’s proceedings. To talk to the State and include
its agents and propagandists is to lend legitimacy and strength to it. To
ostentatiously ignore, avoid and disavow it and to exclude its agents and
propagandists as undesirable is to withdraw consent from the State and to
weaken its legitimacy.

In sharp
contrast to the MPS and its multiple offspring, then, that wanted to reform
and liberalize the welfare-warfare state system from within—pursuing a
“system-immanent” strategy of change, as Marxists would say—and that failed
precisely for this reason and was instead co-opted by the State as part of the
political establishment, my envisioned society, the PFS, was to pursue a
“system-transcending” strategy. That is, it would try to reform, and
ultimately revolutionize, the ever more invasive welfare-warfare State system
from the outside, through the creation of an anti-statist counterculture
that could attract a steadily growing number of defectors—of intellectuals,
educated laymen and even the much-sworn to “man on the street”—away from the
dominant State culture and institutions. The PFS was to be the international
spearhead—the avant-garde—of this intellectual counterculture.

Central to
this counterculture was the insight into the “perversity” of the institution
of a State. A territorial monopolist of law and order that can make and
change laws in its own favor does not and cannot without assuming miracles
protect the life and property of its subjects (clients) but is and always will
be a permanent danger to them, the sure road to serfdom and tyranny. Based on
this insight, then, the PFS was to have a twofold goal. On the one hand,
positively, it was to explain and elucidate the legal, economic, cognitive and
cultural requirements and features of a free, state-less natural order. On
the other hand, negatively, it was to unmask the State and showcase it for
what it really is: an institution run by gangs of murderers, plunderers and
thieves, surrounded by willing executioners, propagandists, sycophants,
crooks, liars, clowns, charlatans, dupes and useful idiots, and an institution
that dirties and taints everything it touches.

For purposes
of full disclosure I must add this: At the urging of my friend Jesus Huerta de
Soto, who had been co-opted at a very young age into the MPS by Hayek
personally, I reluctantly applied for membership sometime in the mid-1990s.
Besides Huerta de Soto the late Arthur Seldon, who was then Honorary
President of the MPS, had endorsed my membership. Nonetheless, I was turned
down—and as I must admit, deservedly so, because I simply did not fit into
such a society. From reliable sources I have been told that it was in
particular Leonard Liggio, a former friend of Murray Rothbard’s, who must have
realized this and most vigorously opposed my membership, seconded from the
German contingent of MPS movers and shakers by Christian Watrin. Both Liggio
and Watrin would later become MPS presidents.

The John
Randolph Club

My second
experience with intellectual societies was with the John Randolph Club, which
had been founded in 1989 by libertarian Murray Rothbard and conservative
Thomas Fleming. From the outset, this society was far more to my liking. For
a while, I played a leading role in the JRC. But I also played a prominent
part in its breakup that occurred shortly after Rothbard’s death in 1995, and
that essentially resulted in the exit of the Rothbardian wing of the society.
Nonetheless, I look back to those early JRC years with fond memories. So it
is no surprise that quite a few of my old JRC comrades have also appeared here
in Bodrum, at PFS meetings: Peter Brimelow, Tom DiLorenzo, Paul Gottfried,
Walter Block, Justin Raimondo, Yuri Maltsev, David Gordon. In addition, I
should mention my friend Joe Sobran, who had wanted to appear at our inaugural
meeting but couldn’t attend because of ill health.

In contrast
to the “international” MPS, the JRC was an “American” Society. This did not
mean that the JRC was more provincial, however. To the contrary. Not only
had the JRC numerous “foreign” members; but whereas the MPS was dominated by
professional economists, the JRC represented a much broader, interdisciplinary
and trans-disciplinary spectrum of intellectual interests and endeavors. On
the average, foreign language proficiency among JRC-ers ranked well above that
encountered in MPS circles. In its habits and ways the MPS was
multi-cultural, egalitarian and non-discriminating, all the while it was
highly restrictive and intolerant regarding the range of permissible subjects
and of intellectual taboos. In sharp contrast, the JRC was a decidedly
bourgeois, anti-egalitarian and discriminating society, but at the same time a
society far more open and tolerant intellectually, without any
taboo-subjects. In addition, whereas MPS meetings were large and impersonal:
they could exceed 500 participants, JRC meetings had rarely more than 150
attendees and were small and intimate.

I liked all
of these aspects of the JRC. (I didn’t much care for the venues of its
meetings: typically some business hotel in the outskirts of a major city. In
this regard, MPS meetings had clearly more to offer – although for a stiff
price.) But, as indicated, not all was well with the JRC, and my encounter
with it also taught me a few lessons on what not to imitate.

The breakup
of the JRC shortly after Rothbard’s death had partly personal reasons. Tom
Fleming, the surviving principal of the Club, is, to put it diplomatically, a
“difficult man,” as everyone who has dealt with him can testify. In addition,
there were organizational quarrels. The meetings of the JRC were organized
annually alternating by the Center for Libertarian Studies, which represented
Murray Rothbard and his men, and by the Rockford Institute, which represented
Thomas Fleming and his. This arrangement had perhaps unavoidably led to
various charges of free-loading. Ultimately, however, the breakup had more
fundamental reasons.

The JRC was a
coalition of two distinct groups of intellectuals. On the one hand was a
group of anarcho-capitalist Austro-libertarians, led by Rothbard, mostly of
economists but also philosophers, lawyers, historians and sociologists (mostly
of a more analytical-theoretical bend of mind). I was a member of this
group. On the other hand was a group of writers associated with the
conservative monthly Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture and its
editor, Thomas Fleming. Paul Gottfried was a member of that group. The
conservative group did not have any economist of note and generally displayed
a more empirical bend of mind. Apart from historians and sociologists, it
included in particular also men of letters: of philologists, literary writers,
and cultural critics.

On the
libertarian side, the cooperation with conservatives was motivated by the
insight that while libertarianism may be logically compatible with many
cultures, socio-logically it requires a conservative, bourgeois core culture.
The decision to form an intellectual alliance with conservatives then involved
for the libertarians a double break with the “establishment libertarianism” as
represented, for instance, by the Washington DC “free market” CATO Institute.
This establishment libertarianism was not only theoretically in error with its
commitment to the impossible goal of limited government (and centralized
government at that), it was also sociologically flawed with its
anti-bourgeois—indeed: adolescent—so-called “cosmopolitan” cultural message:
of multiculturalism and egalitarianism, of “respect no authority,” of
“live-and-let-live,” of hedonism and libertinism. The anti-establishment
Austro-libertarians sought to learn more from the conservative side about the
cultural requirements of a free and prosperous commonwealth. And by and large
they did and learned their lesson. At least I think that I did.

For the
conservative side of the alliance, the cooperation with the Austrian anarcho-capitalists
signified a complete break with the so-called neo-conservative movement that
had come to dominate organized conservatism in the US and which was
represented, for instance, by such Washington DC think tanks as the American
Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. The paleo-conservatives, as
they came to be known, opposed the neo-conservative goal of a highly and
increasingly centralized, “economically efficient” welfare-warfare State as
incompatible with the traditional conservative core values of private
property, of family and family households, and of local communities and their
protection. There were some points of contention between the paleo-cons and
the libertarians: on the issues of abortion and immigration and on the
definition and necessity of government. But these differences could be
accommodated in agreeing that their resolution must not be attempted on the
level of the central state or even some supra-national institution such as the
UN, but always on the smallest level of social organization: on the level of
families and of local communities. For the paleo-cons, secession from a
central State was not a taboo, and for the Austro-libertarians secession had
the status of a natural human right (while establishment libertarians
typically treat it as a taboo subject); hence, cooperation was possible.
Moreover, the cooperation with the Austro-libertarians was to afford the
conservatives the opportunity of learning sound (Austrian school) economics,
which was an acknowledged gap and weakness in their intellectual armor,
especially vis-à-vis their neo-conservative opponents. However, with some
notable exceptions the conservative group failed to live up to these
expectations.

Culture
and Economics

This

,
then, was the ultimate reason for the breakup of the libertarian-conservative
alliance accomplished with the JRC: that while the libertarians were willing
to learn their cultural lesson the conservatives did not want to learn their
economics.

This verdict,
and the consequent lesson, was not immediately clear, of course. It was
driven home only in the course of the events. In the case of the JRC, the
event had a name. It was Patrick Buchanan, TV personality, commentator,
syndicated columnist, best-selling book author, including serious works on
revisionist history, a very charismatic man, witty and with great personal
charm, but also a man with a deep and lasting involvement in Republican Party
politics, first as a Nixon speech-writer and then as White House Director of
Communications under Ronald Reagan.

Pat Buchanan
did not participate directly in the JRC, but he had personal ties to several
of its leading members (on both sides of the Club but especially to the
Chronicles group, which included some of his closest advisors) and he was
considered a prominent part of the counter-cultural movement represented by
the JRC. In 1992, Buchanan challenged then sitting president George Bush for
the GOP presidential nomination. (He would do so again in 1996, challenging
senator Bob Dole for the Republican nomination, and in 2000 he would run as
the presidential candidate for the Reform Party.) Buchanan’s challenge was
impressive at first, nearly upsetting Bush in the New Hampshire primary, and
it initially caused considerable enthusiasm in JRC circles. However, in the
course of Buchanan’s campaign and in reaction to it open dissent between the
two JRC camps broke out as regards the “correct” strategy.

Buchanan
pursued a populist “America First” campaign. He wanted to talk and appeal to
the so-called ‘Middle Americans,’ who felt betrayed and dispossessed by the
political elites of both parties. After the collapse of communism and the end
of the cold war, Buchanan wanted to bring all American troops back home,
dissolve NATO, leave the UN, and conduct a non-interventionist foreign policy
(which his neo-conservative enemies smeared as “isolationist”). He wanted to
cut all but economic ties to Israel in particular, and he openly criticized
the “un-American” influence of the organized Jewish-American lobby, something
that takes considerable courage in contemporary America. He wanted to
eliminate all “affirmative action,” non-discrimination and quota laws that had
pervaded all aspects of American life, and which were essentially anti-white
and especially anti-white-male laws. In particular, he promised to end the
non-discriminatory immigration policy that had resulted in the mass
immigration of low-class third-world people and the attendant forced
integration or, euphemistically, “multiculturalism.” Further, he wanted to end
the entire “cultural rot” coming out of Washington DC by closing down the
federal Department of Education and a multitude of other federal
indoctrination agencies.

But instead
of emphasizing these widely popular “rightist” cultural concerns, Buchanan, in
the course of his campaign, increasingly intoned other, economic matters and
concerns, all the while his knowledge of economics was rather skimpy.
Concentrating on what he was worst at, then, he increasingly advocated a
“leftist” economic program of economic and social nationalism. He advocated
tariffs to protect “essential” American industries and save American jobs from
“unfair” foreign competition, and he proposed to “protect” Middle Americans by
safeguarding and even expanding the already existing welfare-State programs of
minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicaid and
Medicare.

When I
explained, in a speech before the club, that Buchanan’s rightist-cultural and
leftist-economic program was theoretically inconsistent and that his strategy
must consequently fail to reach its own goal, that you cannot return America
to cultural sanity and strengthen its families and communities and at the same
time maintain the institutional pillars that are the central cause for the
cultural malaise, that protectionist tariffs cannot make Americans more
prosperous, but less, and that a program of economic nationalism must alienate
the intellectually and culturally indispensible bourgeoisie while attracting
the (for us and our purposes) “useless” proletariat, it almost came to an
éclat. The conservative group was up in arms about this critique of one of
its heroes.

I had hoped
that, notwithstanding feelings of friendship or personal loyalty, after some
time of reflection reason would prevail, especially after it had become clear
by the ensuing events that Buchanan’s strategy had also failed numerically, at
the polls. I thought that the JRC conservatives would sooner or later come to
realize that my critique of Buchanan was an “immanent” critique; that is, that
I had not criticized or distanced myself from the goal of the JRC, and
presumably also Buchanan’s, of a conservative cultural counterrevolution, but
that, based on elementary economic reasons, I had simply found the means—the
strategy—chosen by Buchanan to accomplish this goal unsuitable and
ineffective. But nothing happened. There was no attempt to refute my
arguments. Nor was there any sign that one was willing to express some
intellectual distance to Buchanan and his program.

From this
experience I learned a twofold lesson. First, a lesson that I had already
come away with from my encounter with the MPS was reinforced: Do not put your
trust in politicians and do not get distracted by politics. Buchanan,
notwithstanding his many appealing personal qualities, was still at heart a
politician who believed in government, above all, as a means of effecting
social change. Second and more generally, however, I learned that it is
impossible to have a lasting intellectual association with people who are
either unwilling or incapable of grasping principles of economics.
Economics—the logic of action—is the queen of the social sciences. It is by
no means sufficient for an understanding of social reality, but it is
necessary and indispensible. Without a solid grasp of economic principles,
say on the level of Henry Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson, one is
bound to commit serious blunders of historical explanation and
interpretation.

Thus, I
concluded that the PFS not only had to exclude all politicians and government
agents and propagandists as objects of ridicule and contempt, as emperors
without clothes and the butt of all jokes rather than objects of admiration
and emulation, but it also had to exclude all economic ignoramuses.

When the JRC
broke apart, this did not mean that the ideas that had inspired its formation
had died out or did no longer find an audience. In fact, in the US, a think
tank dedicated to the same ideas and ideals had grown up. The Ludwig von
Mises Institute, founded in 1982 by Lew Rockwell, with Murray Rothbard as its
academic head, had started out as just another limited government think
tank—although Rothbard and all other leading Mises Institute associates were
anarcho-capitalist Austrians. Yet by the mid-1990s—and I pride myself in
having played an important role in this development—Lew Rockwell had
transformed the institute, significantly located far away from Washington DC,
in provincial Auburn, Alabama, into the very first and only free market think
tank that had openly renounced the goal of limited government as impossible
and come out instead as an unabashed advocate of anarcho-capitalism, deviating
thereby from a narrow, “literal” interpretation of its name sake and yet
staying true to his spirit in pursuing the rigorous, Misesian praxeo-logical
method to its ultimate conclusion. This move was financially costly at first,
but under Rockwell’s brilliant intellectual entrepreneurship it had eventually
become an enormous success, easily outcompeting its far richer
“limited-government-libertarian” rivals such as the CATO Institute in terms of
reach and influence. Moreover, in addition to the Mises Institute, which
focused more narrowly on economic matters, and in the wake of the
disappointing experience with the JRC and its breakup, Lew Rockwell had set
up, in 1999, an anti-state, anti-war, pro-market website—LewRockwell.com—that
added an interdisciplinary, cultural dimension to the Austro-libertarian
enterprise and proved to be even more popular, laying the intellectual
groundwork for the present Ron Paul movement.

A
Libertarian Salon

The PFS was
not supposed to compete with the Mises Institute or LewRockwell.com. It was
not supposed to be a think tank or another publication outlet. Rather, it was
to complement their and other efforts by adding yet another important
component to the development of an anti-statist intellectual counterculture.
What had disappeared with the break-up of the original JRC was an intellectual
Society dedicated to the cause. Yet every intellectual movement requires a
network of personal acquaintances, of friends and comrades in arms to be
successful, and for such a network to be established and grow, a regular
meeting place, a society, is needed. The PFS was supposed to be this society.

I wanted to
create a place where likeminded people from around the world could gather
regularly in mutual encouragement and in the enjoyment of unrivalled and
uncensored intellectual radicalism. The society was supposed to be
international and interdisciplinary, bourgeois, by invitation only, exclusive
and elitist: for the few “elect,” who can see through the smokescreen put up
by our ruling classes of criminals, crooks, charlatans, and clowns.

After our
first meeting, 5 years ago, here at the Karia Princess, my plan became more
specific still. Inspired by the charm of the place and its beautiful garden,
I decided to adopt the model of a salon for the PFS and its meetings. The
dictionary defines a salon as “a gathering of intellectual, social, political,
and cultural elites under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to
amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their
knowledge through conversation.” Take the “political” out of this
definition—and there you have it what I have tried to accomplish for the last
few years, together with Guelcin, my wife and fellow Misesian, without whose
support none of this would be possible: to be hostess and host to a grand and
extended annual salon, and to make it, with your help, the most attractive and
illustrious salon there is.